This work of political theology is the published version of the doctoral thesis of Susan Abraham, who describes herself as a ‘third world woman’ hailing from India, and who studied for her doctorate in the ‘metropole’ of Cambridge, Massachusetts under the supervision of Frances Schüssler Fiorenza. The thesis attempts to set Indian postcolonial theory into a dialogue with modern Roman Catholic theology, and, in particular, the work of Karl Rahner, with the occasional side-trail into John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Abraham engages with the work of three postcolonial theorists from India, successively Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ashis Nandy, and argues that Rahner’s account of freedom, love and the mystical quest can ‘expand the contours of postcolonial theory through a reexamination of notions of subjectivity, gender, and violence’. Her underlying thesis is suggested to her by Robert Schreiter, when he questions the moral claims of postcolonialists who critique the ‘otherness, racism and violence’ of colonial and postcolonial relationships between ‘elites and subalterns’ and ‘metropole and periphery’, but who present no alternative ontology of peace and nonviolence. What Abraham attempts then, is to present a Rahnerian ontology as just such a peaceable and nonviolent alternative to the postcolonial mainstream and in so doing, questions the postcolonial denial of religious agency.

Abraham reviews a wide range of interlocutors in postcolonial theory and Catholic theology. She succeeds in her aim of engaging these interlocutors in a dialogue, and in suggesting that Rahner’s Christian universalism presents an important echo chamber for postcolonial theory. The book is, however, heavy going and laden with jargon. But the biggest problem is a stylistic one. Throughout the book the subjects of sentences include ‘postcolonial theory’, ‘revanchist Roman Catholic theology’ and ‘postcolonial theology’, and so we find that theology ‘calls for’, postcolonial theory ‘needs to take note’ and ‘Roman Catholic postcolonial theology will continue to grapple’. Does theology announce or compose itself without cardinals, preachers or theologians? Does postcolonial theory have a mouthpiece independently of those who plough this particular disciplinary furrow? Theology is the grammar of faith. When it is expressed in grammar that is so poor, it can hardly be said to edify in the faith those who read it.